Town Links

Scouting For Food

Welcome
to the Wellesley Scouting for Food Drive

** Bag drop off on Saturday, November 1, 2014 ** Bag pick up on Saturday, November 8, 2014 between 9:00 AM and 1:00 PM (Deliver to the Pantry before 1:30 PM) ** Route assignments have now been posted here. ** A slideshow (suitable for elementary scouts and older) describes how the Scouting for Food Drive helps the Food Pantry.

Thank you so much
to all the scouts and residents who participated in the Scouting for
Food drive last year. Thirty-one scouting groups, of all ages from
Daisies and Brownies and
Cub Scouts to High School Eagle Scouts, and from every school district
in town
participated. The scouts visited almost 7400 Wellesley residents and
collected
about 526 banana boxes of food for the Pantry, which was sorted and
boxed by over
230 volunteers (including many scouts and parents) on the day of the
food collection.
Cynthia Scott, the Director of the Food Pantry had this to say: "The
Food
Pantry is so grateful to all who made this day possible. Many thanks to
all the
scouts, volunteers, and food donors who have assured that we will have
enough
food to see us through the holidays." Please visit the Food Pantry website to learn more.

Since 1986, Wellesley
Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, and Girl Scouts have participated in Scouting's National
Good Turn - the Scouting for Food program. Our Scouts join three million other
scouts nationwide to collect food to feed the hungry. All the food we collect
will go to the Wellesley Food Pantry to help feed those in our community who rely
on the Pantry, currently over 230 Wellesley families (more than 500 individuals including 184 children). As
the Scouting for Food drive is the single biggest source of donated food to the
Wellesley Food Pantry each year, we need everyone in the community to help! We
thank you all in advance for your generosity, both to those donating food and
those making sure it gets to the Food Pantry.

The Scouts will drop
empty plastic grocery bags from Roche Brothers and a flyer
from the Food Pantry at Wellesley houses on Saturday, October 26. They will return
to pick up these bags the following week on Saturday, November 2. We ask everyone
who receives a bag to fill it with food for the Wellesley Food Pantry. The flyer
will have a list of items that the Wellesley Food Pantry particularly needs.

Every
year, the Food Pantry makes a list of specific foods and supplies that are needed
in greatest demand and this list is printed on a flyer
that will be inside the plastic Roche Brothers grocery bag. This year, the
list includes canned meats and fish, beef stew, ravioli, canned tomatoes, baked
beans, cereal, macaroni and cheese, plain brown or white rice, hearty chicken
or beef soup, pasta and pasta sauce, peanut butter and jelly, coffee, mayonnaise
and vegetable oil. Laundry detergent, bar soap, toilet paper, and paper towels
are also requested. The Food Pantry cannot
acceptexpired food, food in glass containers,
or food that is perishable. They would also like to avoid donations
of Halloween candy.

Please leave the bag in a place which is
visible from the street before 9 AMon Saturday, November 8 . The Scout who left the bag should return to pick it up between 9
AM and 1 PM. The Scout will not ring your doorbell nor enter
your house. The empty bags will be recycled at the RDF.

Please
call the phone number that the Scout has written on your flyer
and remind him/her to pick it up. You can also drop the bag at Roche Brothers
or Whole Foods in the Wellesley Food Pantry box located near the checkout area,
or bring the bag to the Food Pantry (207 Washington St.) on Monday morning between
9-11 AM.

Wellesley has been divided into
376 routes of roughly 20 houses each. A page for each specific route will be downloadable
from the Wellesley Food Pantry website in mid October. Each route page contains a
list of houses on that route and a map of their locations. Routes rather than
territories are the basis for assigning houses to scouts, making the yearly allocation
of houses much more flexible.

Each elementary
school Scout will be responsible for about one-half to one route (or about 10-20
houses), depending on the requests of his or her Scout leader. Older Scouts will
be given one or possibly two routes. If routes are still unassigned, Scouts will
be asked to volunteer for those remaining routes. Our goal is to have the Wellesley
Scouts visit almost each house in town.

(1)
Assign specific blocks of routes to each of the Wellesley Scouting Groups (Cub
Scout Packs, Boy Scout Troops and Girl Scouts) by early/mid October.(2)
If all routes have not been assigned, post the unassigned routes on the Troop
185 website by mid October and ask for volunteers to cover additional
routes. (3) Give plastic bags to each Scouting for Food Coordinator before
October 24.

By the end of
September (as soon as possible), each Scouting Group leader should report to Rula Salameh at rula.salameh27@yahoo.com(1)
The number of members who will be participating in Scouting for Food.

(2)
The name(s) and email address(es) of their Scouting for Food Coordinators.

(1)
Verify the total number of scouts participating in Scouting for Food by
October 11.

(2) If Scouts are in Grades K-5, give Rula the breakdown
of the group by elementary school district, also by October 11.
This will help ensure that Rula will be able to give elementary age Scouts routes
near their homes. Older scouts will not necessarily be given home territory. No
scout is guaranteed to get the route on which his or her house is located. Routes
are assigned on a "first come, first served" basis for the elementary age Scouts,
so the Scouting for Food Coordinators should get their information to Rula as soon
as possible.

(3) After receiving the block of specific routes from Rula by
mid October, match Scouts to routes, taking care to give youngest Scouts the routes
which are nearest their homes. There should be no need to tinker with the routes
or count houses as in the past, which should greatly reduce the time needed for
this job.

(4) Encourage Scouts to volunteer for more routes, particularly
if additional scouts have joined the group. Send specific route requests to Rula Salameh at rula.salameh27@yahoo.comby October 18.

(5) By the weekend of October 25-26,
download the Scouting for Food flyer
and makes copies for every house in his/her block of routes.

(6) By
the weekend of October 25-26, give each Scout his/her allotment of plastic
bags and Scouting for Food flyers. Remind the Scouts to put their first names
and phone numbers on each flyer.

(7) By the weekend of October 25-26, make sure that each scout has a copy of his/her route(s), which
are also downloadable from the Troop 185 website.

After blocks
of routes have been assigned, the list of routes will be posted on this website.
Next to each route will be an indication of which Scouting Group is responsible
for covering it. A downloadable (pdf) page for each route will also be available,
which will include: (1) a listing of the specific houses by street address, (2)
locations of those houses (with respect to cross streets) and (3) an appropriate
section of the Wellesley zoning map with each house on the route labeled. Unassigned
routes (if any) will also be posted so that Scouts may volunteer for specific
additional routes.

Last year it was quite
windy on the day the bags were dropped off and some bags and flyers ended up as
litter in people's yards. Make sure that the bag/flyer is placed in a secure location
- inside a screen door, tied to the door handle is best. It may be useful for
the Scouts to bring some rubber bands with them to help attach the bags to doors.
Scouts should not ring doorbells nor should they go inside buildings. Scouts are
also not allowed to put the bags into mailboxes or through mail slots.

Scouts should pick up bags after 9 AM andbefore 1 PM on Saturday, November 2. The earlier a Scout is able
to get the donated food to the Pantry, the better. Please do not drop off the
food at the Pantry after 1:30 PM as the sorting volunteers will have left by then. (Although there are volunteers who will be working later at the Pantry on November 2nd, they will only be doing final sorting and clean up). But Scouts should also not pick up bags before 9 AM; if they do, some
bags on their route(s) will probably be missed. Although the instructions on the
handout ask that people not donate food in glass jars, there are always glass containers which end up in the food donations. The Scouts
should be careful with the donations bags so any glass inside does not break.

Bags of food should be
delivered to the Food Pantry at the Wellesley Congregational Church at 207 Washington
St. (Route 16 near Route 9) no later than 1:30 PM. Scouts dropping off food
should either get in line along the curb outside the Food Pantry entrance, where
there will be volunteers available to help unload cars OR plan to park in the
Congregational Church parking lot to the left and carry the food into the Pantry.
Food which is unable to be delivered to the Food Pantry by 1:30 PM should be taken
to Roche Brothers and put in the Food Pantry box located near the checkout area,
or brought to the Food Pantry (207 Washington St.) on Monday morning between 9-11
AM.

It
is very important that each Scout pick up at every house where he/she
dropped off a bag. In past years, we have had streets where nobody came
to pick up the filled bags. This does not help the Food Pantry, and it doesn't
help the Scout image. It is the Scout's responsibility to find someone
to help if he is unable to drop off the bags and/or pick them up. It
is permissible for two (or more) scouts to work together to cover all the houses
in their territories. Sometimes one scout has dropped off the bags and his/her
partner has picked them up. Sometimes Scouts do multiple routes as a group. As
long as all houses are covered, Scouting for Food Coordinators can choose
whatever method of dropping off and picking up bags works best for their groups.